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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24602494">Hold Me Higher</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody'>imagined_melody</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>All For The Game - Nora Sakavic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, Future Fic, Gen, M/M, Yoga</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-06-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 08:02:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,845</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24602494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/imagined_melody/pseuds/imagined_melody</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil and Andrew have developed a new hobby. To their friends' surprise, it's partnered acrobatic yoga.</p><p>(Written for nightquills for the AFTG Spring Exchange 2020.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>211</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>AFTG Exchange Spring 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Hold Me Higher</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightquills/gifts">nightquills</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Welcome to my submission for the <i>All For the Game</i> Spring Exchange 2020! Nightquills asked for "Andrew and Neil finding a new hobby to do together"; they suggested something like those wine-and-painting places that are so popular nowadays, but I've been spending my quarantine period doing a lot of yoga, so this was the first thing that came to mind. I really hope you like it!</p><p>Note: I have never done acro-yoga, but I have done aerial yoga and it is awesome. I can't wait to do it again when we're allowed to resume our post-Covid lives again.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It all started when Neil joined his first pro team. </p><p>In addition to group workouts and grueling hours of practice, Neil’s first professional Exy team also met three times a week to attend yoga class. It wasn’t Neil’s first experience with it: he and Renee had taken yoga as an elective one semester, so he had the basics in the back of his mind. But he’d always thought of it more as exercise than meditation. The instructor leading their classes had a different mindset. Neil had been ready to push himself as the poses challenged his flexibility and control, and he was almost frustrated when he was redirected, again and again, to breathing and intentions. </p><p>But after a few sessions, it started to make sense. Slowly, he learned how to loosen his competitive impulse, to search for centering as he flowed into and out of the poses and reach for that internal balance, rather than focusing so much on perfecting what his body was doing. And then, finally, he understood why the team did this together. It wasn’t about athletics: it was about letting go of the physical stress and relentless mental drive of playing a professional sport, learning to decompress together. It was like therapy, like what therapy was supposed to be—maybe like it was for Andrew, on his better days—except that Neil didn’t have to use his words. The <i>relief</i> he felt at that was overwhelming.</p><p>Two years later, when Neil moved onto the same team on which Andrew played, his morning yoga sessions fell by the wayside. But a new routine developed: a few times a month, Neil went to a local studio to try out aerial yoga. Andrew would go off somewhere else, to run errands or do a boxing workout at a nearby gym—but when he knew the class was about to end, he would come and watch. Neil had always been flexible, bending easily in and out of the artistic shapes made by the fusion of his body and the swath of fabric tethered to the ceiling. It was a small pleasure to watch him move through the carefully balanced poses, one that Andrew was always willing to allow himself if he could get away with it.</p><p>(Neil’s favorite part of aerial yoga class was the final few minutes; the instructor guided them into <i>shavasana</i>, and together they all laid thoroughly encased in their hammocks, enclosed on all sides and womb-like, cocooned. He would close his eyes and curl in, suspended above the ground, safe and supported and warm. Some minutes later, he and the rest of the class would emerge, dazed and blinking like baby birds seeing the sun for the first time. It was the best part of the class for Neil—and the only part Andrew was sure that he himself could not do. Dangling off the ground within a barrier he couldn’t see through, with no way to anticipate if someone was near him, was enough to send a slow, uneasy spike of anxiety through his gut. But seeing Neil relaxed and drunk on the release of it was infinitely better than trying it for himself, anyway.)</p><p>~*~*~*~*~*~</p><p>Here was the thing about Andrew and boundaries: Andrew did not like to be touched by strangers. Andrew had some aversions to being the focus of sexual attention, particularly, and that was even true of the rare people he let close to him. Andrew could have days where he shied away from even casual touch from trusted friends, when his walls around contact shot up and made him unreachable physically.</p><p>But Andrew <i>himself</i> was, in his own way, an astonishingly tactile person. He craved physical proximity when it came to the people that mattered, even if he wasn’t that demonstrative about it. And on a normal day, he didn’t really mind if that inner circle of people touched him—as long as he got to control when, and in what way, and for how long. He didn’t always want prolonged, aimless touching, but if there was a purpose, he could tolerate it. Especially if the person providing the contact was Neil.</p><p>One night, Andrew met Neil at his yoga class as usual, and afterward he waited in the hall while Neil went into the bathroom to change out of his workout clothes. The bathroom faced out into another studio, and Andrew found himself watching the activity taking place inside it—idly at first, and then with increasing interest. The room was full of people paired off in groups of two, and the poses they were doing were not isolated: they were collaborative, one person balancing on the other, as though they could defy gravity. </p><p>He almost didn’t notice when Neil reappeared next to him. “Holy shit,” the other man muttered. “That’s fucking awesome.” Then he nudged Andrew with his elbow. “I bet we could do that.”</p><p>Andrew pinched him. “Shut the fuck up,” he grumbled, but Neil was already shaking his head.</p><p>“I’m serious! You’ve got ridiculous leg strength, and I’m pretty good at holding yoga poses by now. We’d be awesome at it.” He turned and grinned at Andrew. “Come on. You can’t tell me you could watch that and <i>not</i> want to try it.”</p><p>“I’m not doing a partner yoga class with you.”</p><p>Neil shrugged. “Of course not. We’ll do it at home.”</p><p>~*~*~*~*~*~</p><p>It turned out that acro yoga was even more of a trust exercise than they’d originally suspected. </p><p>There was no question which of them would be the “flyer” and which would be the base. Andrew wasn’t opposed to the physical-contact aspect of the practice, but there was no way that he was going to let anyone hold him up above the ground, in such a way that any wrong move might make him fall. He’d rather be the support.</p><p>Luckily, he had a partner who was always up to take risks.</p><p>They studied Youtube videos for an hour before getting on the mat. The first few poses were surprisingly easy: no one had to balance too much since they were touching each other with both hands and feet, and as long as Andrew got used to the weight of Neil’s body pressing against his own, it wasn’t so bad. It helped that Neil’s years of yoga had trained him not to drop his body weight; he found his center and lifted into it, letting the force of his body distribute evenly.</p><p>The next few poses were a little harder. They balanced on each other, lifted off the ground, created a firm base of support—and then Neil detached his hands from Andrew’s to try and move into bird pose, and for the first time, he faltered. Despite Andrew’s solid hold on his hips with his feet, Neil wasn’t prepared to locate quite so much of his weight there. He shook, tilted, and Andrew just barely caught Neil’s flailing body with his own as they both rolled in a crumpled heap to the floor.</p><p>Neil was laughing, though, and as long as he was content Andrew couldn’t be too concerned. “Fuck, that’s hard,” Neil gasped, and then shifted back onto hands and knees and shook himself out. “Okay. Let’s try again.”</p><p>~*~*~*~*~*~</p><p>Which is how six months later the Foxes, meeting up for their yearly team reunion, got a surprise they were definitely not expecting.</p><p>It was 9:00 a.m. when most of the Foxes, dressed and groomed and caffeinated as best as they could, left the hotel where they were staying to migrate to the Minyard-Josten apartment a few blocks away. Kevin pulled out the key they had lent him so the team could come in and out while they were visiting, but he took one step in the door—and was immediately too surprised to take another.</p><p>Kevin blinked several times in succession. “What the fuck.”</p><p>It was impossible to decide which part of the sight before him to take in first. Andrew’s legs were extending straight upwards, together in a sort of parallel position in the air. His feet were supporting Neil’s body under the armpits; not a single inch of Neil’s body was touching the ground, all of it balanced on top of Andrew. Neil’s back was bowed with his head extended back, feet pressed against Andrew’s knees, hands gripping his own ankles. The pose looked dangerously precarious, but other than some mild strain of holding his muscles still to maintain the pose, Andrew didn’t seem likely to let Neil fall. His back was flat on the floor, hands resting on his own stomach. </p><p>From somewhere past Andrew’s feet, Neil’s voice supplied, “Camel pose,” as though that explained anything Kevin was seeing. A moment passed, and then Neil tapped his toe against Andrew’s leg, and in perfect coordination they unfurled: Andrew’s hands came up to help Neil extend his legs in front of him, then folded himself so that Neil’s weight could come forward and his feet could lower to the ground. </p><p>“Ooh, acro yoga!” Nicky gushed, pushing his way past Kevin’s stunned form into the apartment. “Fun AND sexy!” Neil rolled his eyes and Andrew threw a couch pillow at him; Nicky ignored both.</p><p>Aaron was merely watching them with a raised eyebrow. “You know, you really shouldn’t do stuff like that without a spotter,” he said. “And is this your idea of a safety strategy? What is this?” He gestured to the floor of the living room, in which Neil and Andrew had laid out their two yoga mats side by side, and then lined the perimeter with all the couch cushions and throw pillows they could find, as padding from the hard floor below.</p><p>Andrew shrugged. “We thought about getting a gym mat, but it didn’t really fit.” They were making good money playing Exy, but the apartment was still tiny, only big enough for the two of them and the cats.</p><p>Renee smiled. “Did you see the photo Jeremy posted? They were doing <i>paripurna navasana</i> the other day.” She showed them her phone screen, which was displaying a photo from Jeremy Knox’s Instagram, with him and Jean balanced in an equally improbable position. </p><p>Neil’s face lit up. “Ooh, we’ll have to work on that one,” he said, and Andrew nodded and exchanged a small high-five with him before retreating to the bathroom to towel off. </p><p>Everyone looked a little bewildered, except Allison, who shrugged. “Honestly, I kind of expected them to have even weirder hobbies.”</p><p>~*~*~*~*~*~</p><p>After they’ve all gone home, Renee sends a photo to the group chat, taken a few days earlier. It’s Andrew and Neil in paired plank pose: Andrew sturdy on his hands and feet like he’s getting ready to do a push-up, Neil on top with his feet on Andrew’s shoulderblades and hands wrapped around his ankles—and at the very top, King Fluffkins perched on the lean stretch of Neil’s back. Neil is grinning; even Andrew has a wryly amused look on his face.</p><p>Matt makes it his cell phone background for a month.</p><p>(Secretly, Andrew does too.)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I am on tumblr at <a href="http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com">imaginedmelody</a>! If you'd like to see some of the poses I describe in this fic, <a href="http://imaginedmelody.tumblr.com/post/620333479256899585/hold-me-higher-imaginedmelody-all-for-the">my post</a> promoting this fic includes some photos that I used as reference.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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